Pasta is delicious, beautiful and is pretty much my favourite food. It is historic, resilient and very adaptable. From simple everyday ingredients – water, flour and eggs – we can create an elastic dough that can be rolled, cut or squashed into a million different shapes, coloured into a million more and flavoured with countless sauces or meats and vegetables. We can learn a lot from pasta. The ability to adapt is essential within the ever-changing and chaotically-complex world of work. Here are three adaptability lessons from pasta that might leave you a little hungry.
Change your shape
From the same ingredients – water, flour and eggs – we can make over 350 types of pasta. Different shapes serve different purposes. For example, long, thin noodles, like fettuccini, usually pair well with lighter sauces, whereas hollow shapes, like penne, are better with heartier sauces with lots of meat or veggie chunks to scoop up. Pasta can be kneaded and stretched into nearly anything.
By adopting a growth mindset and cultivating grit you will enhance your ability to embrace change or pivot to a new opportunity when life forces you to adapt. Just like pasta, human beings are more or less made up of the same stuff – our brains might be unique, and we are blessed with different abilities and privileges, but the core ingredients are all there. The ability to re-organize our skills, abilities and experiences to solve new problems is critical because of how fast things are changing.
Evolve your function
I’ve eaten the most delicious and perfect carbonara in Rome and will be making an eight-minute homemade mac and cheese dish for my family tonight. Both dishes are delicious and satisfy the eaters, but they’re totally different while being made from similar stuff. Whether it’s the star of the dish or a simple appetizer, pasta has the potential to play many roles in a meal. Some chefs have taken things to weird and amazing new levels when it comes to adapting how this food can be prepared and served.
One of my favourite things about being a people leader is that I can build and deliver work as well as guide or advise colleagues to do the same. My skills as a coach work almost as well with friends and family as they do with the executives I support. By imagining different perspectives and testing and learning ways of completing work – not to mention asking for feedback from teammates – I am constantly adapting my core skills and natural style to different situations.
Change flavours
Let’s say you’re spaghetti. Your shape and function might be a determined – the main course of a family meal – but the flavour possibilities are nearly endless when you think about potential preparations. A Bolognese sauce rich with pork and tomatoes will make the noodles taste very different than a Sicilian-style spaghetti with squid that brings the seafood alive with fennel. The spaghetti adapts to the flavours even if it’s the same pasta.
I’m not spaghetti, but I am an expert in organizational learning and development. My expertise will shift and adapt depending on where I bring my style and skills. Different collaborators flavour my work in different ways and, even if my knowledge and content doesn’t change much, the final product or delivery of a subject will often be adapted because of how we prepare the work.
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